OK. This is one wild weird strange but compelling story! I kept wondering where it was going. I was both appalled and impressed by Rosy. And I had to keep reading just to find out WHAT THE HECK IS going to happen here?! When it was all over, all I could think was, “Well, that was strange.” I enjoyed it.

I am just going to pull the first sentence and the last paragraph from the goodreads.com blurb (which you can also get to by clicking on the book cover above):

Rosa Achmetowna is the outrageously nasty and wily narrator of this rollicking family saga from the author of Broken Glass Park.

ooooooooooooooAnyone read Broken Glass Park, also published by Europa? I will read it someday.

Told with sly humor and an anthropologist’s eye for detail, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is the story of three unforgettable women whose destinies are tangled up in a family dynamic that is at turns hilarious and tragic. In her new novel, Russian-born Alina Bronsky gives readers a moving portrait of the devious limits of the will to survive.

RATING: Four slices of pie. A savory beet pie? I can’t recall reading about any pies served in this – which is most unlike me not to notice, or there just weren’t any…